The process of the electrical personalization can be divided into two stages. In the first stage, the initialization, the data carrier is provided with general data which are identical for all data carriers of the same type. In the following this kind of personalization data is referred to as initialization data. In the second stage, the individualization, each data carrier is provided with individual data which for example contain data that adapt the individual data carrier to the end user. In the following this kind of personalization data is referred to as individualization data.
According to the prior art (Rankl, Wolfgang/Effing, Wolfgang: Handbuch der Chipkarten. Munich4, 2002), accordingly, the personalization usually is carried out in two production steps which carry out the initialization and the individualization respectively. Usually, this takes place by the use of various plants and techniques. In the first step the identical initialization data are introduced into the data carriers to be personalized, in the second the individualization data.
The process of the personalization of data carriers is a critical step within the entire production process for data carriers, since the time required for writing the personalization data into the non-volatile memory of the data carrier is comparatively high and substantially influences the production costs. The step of initialization can be accelerated in that at first only one single data carrier is conventionally initialized by means of logical commands. Then a memory image of the entire memory of this data carrier is generated and used for initializing the further data carriers with the aid of the physical memory addresses.
Such a memory image is also referred to as image. Unlike a normal copy, an image is an exact bit-true image of the original and thus contains substantially more information than only the files stored on the original data carrier, for example also the structure of the file system and the like. This permits a fast generation of an exact bit-true reproduction of the data carrier, because here hardware functions and physical memory addresses can be directly used. It is also possible to generate a memory image only of parts of the whole memory and to introduce it directly into not used corresponding memory areas of a further data carrier or to introduce only parts of a memory image of a whole memory into a further data carrier. Thus, in particular data carriers can be personalized which in the memory area to be written into are still not provided with any structure and on which there is still not provided any file system.
A similar concept is described in WO 2004/107282 A1, in the method described therein from each further data carrier initialized per memory image then a reconversion routine is carried out for reconverting the non-volatile memory introduced with the memory image. The reconversion for example comprises that data which hitherto have been disguised on the basis of a random number Z1, such as e.g. keys, convert into data disguised on the basis of a random number Z2 individual for each data carrier.
The concept of using virtual data carriers for the personalization is known, too. U.S. Pat. No. 6,202,155 B1 describes a system for the personalization of transaction cards. The system receives information necessary for the personalization and creates a virtual card thereof. Virtual devices in this system control real physical personalization machines, which then produce the real transaction card based on the data of the virtual card. Specifications as to the technical realization of the individual personalization steps, in particular introducing the data into the cards, are not given there.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,729,549 B2 describes a system for the personalization of smart cards. Therein, the smart cards at first are virtually generated by means of a control program. The personalization of a real smart card then is effected by means of a personalization program accessing the virtual smart card. The smart cards to be personalized partly are already pre-initialized, in particular they have already a defined file structure which has already been imitated on generating the virtual smart card. The personalization data are written by the personalization program by means of smart-card-specific logical commands into the real smart card.